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ICIS 2005 Best Paper Award to Dr Séamas Kelly

Dr Séamas Kelly awarded the Overall Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) held in Las Vegas, 2005.

Titled "New frontiers in the theorisation of ICT-mediated interaction? Exploring the implications of a situated learning epistemology", it won the Overall Best Paper Award at ICIS from amongst the almost 600 papers submitted to the conference.

Abstract

In this paper, I suggest that recent contributions to the ‘knowledge management’ literature could be taken to constitute a dramatic epistemic shift for the IS field, which may open up new frontiers in the theorization of information, communication, and forms of ICT-mediated social interaction. Specifically, I argue that a move away from an overly ‘intellectualist’ conception of information and communication (and attendant forms of representationalism), offers the prospect of re-conceptualizing the role of ICT as a complementary mode of engagement with the lifeworld, which may facilitate distinctive forms of collective sensemaking/ learning. Moreover, I suggest that by conceptualizing such processes as a duality of reification and social participation (following Wenger 1998), the specific material constitution of the technology (i.e. the form of the medium), and its significance for mediating and shaping important features of social interaction and the relationships that underpin them, is brought firmly into the analytical foreground. Amongst other things, this may offer promising opportunities for a more substantive theorization of the ICT artifact (see Monteiro et al. 1996; see Orlikowski et al. 2001). As a tentative first step in this new terrain, I offer the concept of ‘digiscribing’ as an alternative to Zuboff’s (1988) influential notion of ‘informating’, as a means of thinking about the relationship between information, ICT and organization. The ideas are illustrated and developed with reference to an in-depth, interpretive study of groupware implementation and use at a large global consulting services firm.

Notes:

Dr Kelly's research focuses on the relationship between information technology and processes of social and organisational change.

The paper is published under the "Social, Behavioral, and Organizational Aspects of Information Systems" section as part of the ICIS 2005 conference proceedings and is available from the AIS eLibrary :